The ever increasing size of on and off-highway trucks has given rise to shipping problems; namely, various regulations which dictate the maximum size of a truck and components thereof which may be shipped on commercial carriers. Therefore, truck bodies and the like are normally broken-down into their component parts to comply with such regulations and to also substantially decrease composite shipping volumes and shipping costs. In conventional practice, the truck body is normally completed at a manufacturing facility by securing the various plates and beam members thereof together by standard welding processes.
The completed truck body is then cut into several sections at the various welds for shipping purposes. The re-assembly and fabrication of the component parts at a customer's job site requires complex fixtures and methods for applying high quality welds over the welded joints which have been severed previously. In addition to the laborious and time-consuming nature of such a procedure, the resulting welds are sometimes found defective to thus impair the structural integrity of the completed truck body.